The sound of silence...

I feel like my heart is broken. And I can't help but wonder how that can be. I just finished spending two and a half weeks of vacation with someone very close to me, traveling and living it up as best as we could. It was like a dream to see someone you remember from your "old life," that faint outline of who you used to be and what you used to do, step off the plane and ride home with you, and remind you that the world around you really is vastly different from the world you used to be a part of. And now that dream is gone from me.
I know this sounds really melodramatic. That's part of the problem. For two and a half weeks, my house was full of laughter, and conversation and playful teasing. I could just vent or let loose on a silly tangent, and it was met by a caring friend and lover and responded to. I didn't have to let it build until this point; I had a pressure valve, in the form of a lover.
Such therapy worked better than expected on my lonesome moods, and for two and a half weeks, my experience in Japan crested. Things were infinitely better with partnership and conversation. About a million times better. Cooking wasn't depressing (we were cooking together, for each other!), neither was transit (we always had each other, and we could talk and tickle to our heart's content!), and the house never wanted for warmth.

It hit me after saying goodbye at the airport. We talked and held each other through the three-hour trip to the airport. I welled up at the coffeeshop, as we started to sift through our goodbyes. We hugged and then, like a gunshot, I returned to the lonely world that I'd been in every other moment I'd spent in Japan. After two and a half weeks of half-thought out comments and caresses, it stopped all at once.

And I rode home for three hours without saying a word to anyone. I was moving through and with thousands of commuters all on their separate agendas around Tokyo and beyond, and I was totally alone.

It's painful to feel that way. I often feel the most alone when I'm surrounded by people, but this was totally different. It was one of the most depressing moments in my whole life.

And tomorrow, I wake up early and begin the elementary-intensive plan that has been worked up for me. I know I'm overreacting, and in three weeks, I may see this entry and laugh it all off; but right now, I've received those parts of me that I thought I'd left back home. And I have to go through the pain of learning how to be lonesome again. I want to talk to her just as much; even more, really.

But, when I walked into my door, I was greeted only by the cold silence of my house. The things we ate from this morning are still dirty in the sink, our towels hanging wet in the hall. For now, I really can't bear to move anything around, because if I clean up, I can't pretend that she's just in the other room, and that I don't really have to return to this daily silence.
I can't do that tonight. I might take a few days.

I'm sorry if this sounds really depressing. I know I'm really fine, but I'm just having a bit of a hard time right now. I'll be fine. Like always, it just takes time.